Unnecessary quotation marks are my bête noire, but these seem appropriate:
See more examples here.
Billboard of the day
October 23, 2009 • 5:25 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Calgary, Georgia they have a Mule Day Museum (or Muleseum, as I like to say) and ever single information display is chock full of seemingly random quotation marks scattered though the text. I took some photos at the time, but can only find one, not particularly heinous example. Here it is:
TOBACCO LEAF STRINGER
The “tobacco leaf stringer” was used to “string” tobacco leaves so they could be “cured” or dried, prior to sales.
Scare quotes that live up to their name.
Oh, No! You sent me to the Huffington “Post” “blog”.
I used to do a lot of editing on Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia markup language specifies italics with two single-quote. In other words, ”this would be italicized”. During the time when I was most heavily editing Wikipedia, I occasionally caught myself in e-mails or blog comment forms accidentally trying to add emphasis like ”this” instead of like *this* or like this.
So when I see this kind of thing, I just tell myself that the people doing the billboard were Wikipedia addicts. It’s almost certainly untrue, but it’s a comforting delusion. (Does that make me religious? heh)
The atheists are sabotaging the Xians.
Why not? They’re can’t be expelling ID scientists all of the time, might as well mess up a billboard once in a while.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Holy Mess!
A bit OT, but in Science today there is an interesting article on fighting ID/creationism in Hong Kong.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5952/510-b
Interesting, the Kwok in this story agitates FOR evolution!
If you are not actually quoting anything, I interpret quotes as meaning “not really this”. So that sign is perfect.
I do have an issue with apostrophitis. (As in cigarette’s) It’s ubiquitous; even in professional ads. Makes me twitch.
I caught myself doing it in a comment on some blog just yesterday. Unfortunately it was a blog where you can’t edit once a comment was posted. Deeply embarrassing. Thankfully, nobody pointed it out 🙂
It’s not just “your” bete noire; there is an entire “blog” devoted to this “phenomenon.”
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/
God, troops, American, family – an impressive quantity of hooray words for such a short announcement.
nice catch on the accent circonflexe
Thats great! There is a Taco Bell near me in San Diego that says the following:
—–
Sorry we do not accept larger than “$20” dollar bills.
—–
Its hilarious both because of the unnecessary quotes, but also because of the redundant dollar sign.
Poor troops.
I’d thank the troops for the troops, but I’m odd like that. Not wasting gratitude on the Easter Bunny an’ all.